When You Asked Me If I Think We're Ready For Children

by Lincoln Ballif





You’d be disturbed by how many snakes surround

you. Slumbering in the woodpile, pulling along gopher

holes beneath the apartment. Were their habitats reversed,

maybe we’d see there are as many snakes as birds. Can you

picture them gathering in twisted nests in the maples?

Can you hear the morning song of their tongues? What

we should do is rake all the snakes into one big

hole, swash them in oil, torch them till the ashes gather

so thick upon the porches, they have to close the schools.

We’ll swan into mounds of flaking leaves, right to the center,

to the warmest spot of earth without a thought for

what used to coil there. Maybe then we’ll give it a go.





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